American Sniper

Geico266

Geico266

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I saw the movie yesterday. While I totally love the story line and respect Chris Kyle service to our country, I have to say I am disappointed in the movie. Hollywood's portrays war something much different than it is, I get that.

Before I vent has anyone else seen it? Your thoughts?
 
Geico266 said:
I saw the movie yesterday. While I totally love the story line and respect Chris Kyle service to our country, I have to say I am disappointed in the movie. Hollywood's portrays war something much different than it is, I get that.

Before I vent has anyone else seen it? Your thoughts?
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I have not been to the movies in 20+ years......

Hollywood has a nasty habit of spinning ANY story to fit their warped views...
 
Okay that is long enough I can't wait. ;)

The scene where he is holding his baby is fake. It is a freaking doll! :eek: I picked it up immediately it looked so freaking fake. A guy behind me said it out loud. They couldn't afford to pay a mother with a baby to shoot the 45 second scene? :rolleyes:

In the middle if a horendous fire fight he pulls out a sat phone and calls his wife? Seriously? :no: :mad2:

At the end of the movie, in front of his kids he points a revolver at his wife in a game? :yikes:

Last firefight, they are given orders to conserve ammo, yet they put their weapons on full auto and began "spray & pray". :mad2:

Yet, this is being heralded as the greatest movie since " Platoon". Not even in the same ballpark. A total disservice to Afghanistan vets, IMHO.
 
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Geico266 said:
Okay that is long enough I can't wait. ;)

The scene where he is holding his baby is fake. It is a freaking doll! :eek: I picked it up immediately it looked so freaking fake.
You know how hard it is getting a union card for babies these days?
In the middle if a horendous fire fight he pulls out a sat phone and calls his wife?:mad2:
Plenty of pilots here that advocate talking first when the heat is on.
At the end of the movie, in front of his kids he points a revolver at his wife in a game? :yikes:
You gotta keep em in line, pointing guns at them is far nicer then hitting em.
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How was the popcorn?
 
Felt a little like a commercial for the military
 
Positives to the movie.

They used several wounded warriors as extras with talking parts. A very nice touch.

Good cinematography, sets, and special effects.

Acting was good, but nothing stood out IMHO.
 
I read an article from one of the technical advisors. He said the Marines were Moroccan extras that had one day of training. yea the baby doll was bad but the California laws are so strict on baby actors that Eastwood couldn't get the shot with the real babies they had available.
 
A couple of thoughts.

I have not seen the movie, and only learned much about Kyle when he was killed at the shooting range. Strange way to go.


With the above said, based upon FaceBook, and a bit of Twitter, most people who think it was the greatest movie ever told about one of the greatest American heroes are the same people who tend to like Fox News and other right-wing propaganda websites.

I don't know if my more left-wing friends even have seen it, as there really aren't any comments about it.

And, here is a criticism I stumbled across, that I read a bit after stumbling across a bunch of attacking comments toward the author.
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/22/785979...t=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter
 
Sorry, I'm not cheap, but maybe I am easy, both me and my son thought the movie was excellent. Just my 2 cents.
 
Infants are limited to 10 seconds active filming due to the heat of the lights on a set. Even children under 16 are limited to active filming time. I think for 12-16, the time limit is 30 seconds. But my copy of Brooks and the union rules are out of date.
 
Interesting info on the facts of the movie. Seems Chris Kyle was less than honest about some events in his book.

Kyle claimed in his book to have punched Jesse Ventura in the face in a bar for making comments about seals. Ventura (A Navy UDT "SEAL" himself) claimed the event never happened sued Kyle for defamation and won a $1.8 million judgment that was paid for by the book's insurance company.

Kyle also claimed to have killed two car jackers, but that has never been confirmed by any law enforcement agencies.

http://www.historyvshollywood.com/reelfaces/american-sniper/
 
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I just watched it.

The only issue I have is the 2100yd shot portrayed in the movie. It was not realistic.

As a long range shooter myself. (.338lupua) out to 1000 yards I can safely say that his rig could of possibly done the job but not kneeling using his bipod without a but rest and not using a sophisticated ballistics program. And he didn't even use a spotting scope to verify his target?

I get it that it's a movie but that bugged me because they boasted that they used expert snipers to assist the movie.
 
I don't have personal experience with other parts of the movie, but I was in Sadr City when shtf, and that part of the movie was pretty damn spot on.

There's a scene where a soldier is emplacing T-walls. My Company was clearing ahead of the T-wall crew at phase line gold around the clock. We inched our way along al Quds road clearing IEDs and ambushes as we went, trying to draw as much fire off the T-wall crews as possible. There was god's own supply of green and red tracers, RPGs, hellfires, daisy-chained IEDs and crap going everywhere. After phase line gold was complete we did non-stop 24/7 missions all through Sadr, clearing a ton of IEDs. We would rarely come out with as many mission capable vehicles as we went in with. We would have one platoon of engineers on mission, another platoon on standby to help pull them out if a vehicle got hit, and another platoon on 6 hour rest cycle. When the hot platoon either finished their mission or had to be pulled out, the standby platoon went in and the next platoon went on standby. We did that for two months without a break except for a few days when we ran out of vehicles.

I've heard that the movie and the book take liberties with the facts, but I don't care. It's an entertaining movie, and there's enough fact that I can verify from personal experience in it that I'll chalk up the rest to poetic license.
 
...........based upon FaceBook, and a bit of Twitter, most people who think it was the greatest movie ever told about one of the greatest American heroes are the same people who tend to like Fox News and other right-wing propaganda websites.

I don't know if my more left-wing friends even have seen it, as there really aren't any comments about it.

And, here is a criticism I stumbled across, that I read a bit after stumbling across a bunch of attacking comments toward the author.
http://www.vox.com/2015/1/22/785979...t=chorus&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter[/QUOTE]
A pretty broad and sweeping statement about positive reviewers. I couldn't figure out how the linked review could get everything so wrong. Then I realizedit was written by somebody who had probably never taken "The Oath" or written the proverbial "Blank Check to the American People (not government)". I think the left dislike the movie because it is not out right anti-war and for the most part apolitical. It is an excellent character study of the effects war can have on military members and their families. Which is what both the director and stars have stated was their focus. Even with the poetic license taken, my wife and I saw it last night and thought it was an excellent movie. The book is now in my que.
 
Rigged4Flight said:
I don't have personal experience with other parts of the movie, but I was in Sadr City when shtf, and that part of the movie was pretty damn spot on.

There's a scene where a soldier is emplacing T-walls. My Company was clearing ahead of the T-wall crew at phase line gold around the clock. We inched our way along al Quds road clearing IEDs and ambushes as we went, trying to draw as much fire off the T-wall crews as possible. There was god's own supply of green and red tracers, RPGs, hellfires, daisy-chained IEDs and crap going everywhere. After phase line gold was complete we did non-stop 24/7 missions all through Sadr, clearing a ton of IEDs. We would rarely come out with as many mission capable vehicles as we went in with. We would have one platoon of engineers on mission, another platoon on standby to help pull them out if a vehicle got hit, and another platoon on 6 hour rest cycle. When the hot platoon either finished their mission or had to be pulled out, the standby platoon went in and the next platoon went on standby. We did that for two months without a break except for a few days when we ran out of vehicles.

I've heard that the movie and the book take liberties with the facts, but I don't care. It's an entertaining movie, and there's enough fact that I can verify from personal experience in it that I'll chalk up the rest to poetic license.[/QUO

Thank you for the review/ historical perspective and a big Thank You for your service!
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Reality of it from a movie perspective is it is geared towards general public and story telling entertainment. Anyone that has true life, direct contact with war will have different views because of experience. No different from a Naval Aviator Instructor or student watching the Top Gun movie. Parts are Very Lame to the experienced eye.

I'm just thankful for the men and women that serve/served. That way the bleeding heart, socialism wishing liberals has the freedom to slowly destroy this once great nation from within.
 
Thought the movie was good. I have no direct contact with being in a war zone, so I am blind to most of the nuances that people are complaining about. The wife noticed the fake baby thing, I didn't (simply because I never focused on the baby). I don't feel like they glorified being a sniper and they seemed to show a pretty even-handed look at the threats faced by the ground forces in this particular engagement. They left out a lot of Kyle's problems at home, like his drinking binges and threatening to kill his parents. All in all I thought the movie was enjoyable, and I didn't detect much "spin" from Eastwood.

I'd say as far as war movies go, it's probably on par with Blackhawk Down.
 
I have not seen it. I will say that the last Clint Eastwood directed movie (Gran Torino, which he acted in as well) disappointed me very much.
 
SmashTime said:
I just watched it.

The only issue I have is the 2100yd shot portrayed in the movie. It was not realistic.

As a long range shooter myself. (.338lupua) out to 1000 yards I can safely say that his rig could of possibly done the job but not kneeling using his bipod without a but rest and not using a sophisticated ballistics program. And he didn't even use a spotting scope to verify his target?

I get it that it's a movie but that bugged me because they boasted that they used expert snipers to assist the movie.
Click to expand...

Good observation. Did you notice he made the shot on an unstable oval oil barrel thing? It was rolling back and forth when he put the bipod on it. :rolleyes:
 
Rigged4Flight said:
I don't have personal experience with other parts of the movie, but I was in Sadr City when shtf, and that part of the movie was pretty damn spot on.

There's a scene where a soldier is emplacing T-walls. My Company was clearing ahead of the T-wall crew at phase line gold around the clock. We inched our way along al Quds road clearing IEDs and ambushes as we went, trying to draw as much fire off the T-wall crews as possible. There was god's own supply of green and red tracers, RPGs, hellfires, daisy-chained IEDs and crap going everywhere. After phase line gold was complete we did non-stop 24/7 missions all through Sadr, clearing a ton of IEDs. We would rarely come out with as many mission capable vehicles as we went in with. We would have one platoon of engineers on mission, another platoon on standby to help pull them out if a vehicle got hit, and another platoon on 6 hour rest cycle. When the hot platoon either finished their mission or had to be pulled out, the standby platoon went in and the next platoon went on standby. We did that for two months without a break except for a few days when we ran out of vehicles.

I've heard that the movie and the book take liberties with the facts, but I don't care. It's an entertaining movie, and there's enough fact that I can verify from personal experience in it that I'll chalk up the rest to poetic license.
Click to expand...

Agreed.


Thank you for your service.
 
Geico266 said:
Good observation. Did you notice he made the shot on an unstable oval oil barrel thing? It was rolling back and forth when he put the bipod on it. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Yes I saw that, that was the least worrisome issue with his 2100 yard shot.

I think he'd realistically need about 10 full minutes of analyzing the shot and figuring out the ballistics for the shot.

I also love how for all his shots he never moves his reticle, he just zooms in with his parallax.

Understand that a 7mm round will typically fall 7 inches at 300 yards if centered at 100yrds. The same round falls 48 inches at 500 yards. He would of seriously ran out of minutes of angle on his scope. To visualize this, imagine aiming 30ft above a target to compensate for drop, now imagine aiming 30 more ft to the left or right to compensate for wind, bullet drift from rotational spinning and the earth spinning on its axis.

It's a very difficult shot with a .50bmg, and he appears to have done it with a .338. He made the shot in real life, he is a legend. But it was just a quirk I had with the movie.
 
I am surprised somebody would even go see the movie after watching the trailer which reeked so strongly of a heroic BS sappy propaganda saga that I immediately filed it in my mind under "do not watch".
Sorry for y'all's wasted time, money and patience. The fake infant takes the cake. :)
 
BigBadLou said:
I am surprised somebody would even go see the movie after watching the trailer which reeked so strongly of a heroic BS sappy propaganda saga that I immediately filed it in my mind under "do not watch".
Sorry for y'all's wasted time, money and patience. The fake infant takes the cake. :)
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Everyone is complaining of the fake infant. But the reality is, if you watched it on a website making fun of the infant then yes it looks pretty bad but when I watched it in the movie it wasn't nearly as bad. They had baby sounds, and cgi helping it out. And if you were seriously focusing on the baby during that scene then you weren't really paying attention to the importance of the movie.

Again, for those of you who have only watched YOUTUBE videos of certain parts of the movie, it's not fair for you to comment because you haven't actually seen the movie.
 
Sac Arrow said:
I have not seen it. I will say that the last Clint Eastwood directed movie (Gran Torino, which he acted in as well) disappointed me very much.
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Huh. I thought GT was great.

I try not to nitpick movies to death on how things couldn't happen in real life. I mean, geez, you guys could ruin Porkys or even Top Gun. :wink2:
 
BigBadLou said:
I am surprised . . . Sorry for y'all's wasted time, money and patience. The fake infant takes the cake. :)
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Lol, you must not be able to watch any movie or television show at all if you can't let go of the "left-wing/right-wing" microscope and just enjoy the movie for what it is. It's not meant as a strict autobiography, it's an action-drama movie.
 
Gerhardt said:
Huh. I thought GT was great.

I try not to nitpick movies to death on how things couldn't happen in real life. I mean, geez, you guys could ruin Porkys or even Top Gun. :wink2:
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It was so un-Clint like. He failed to save the girl.
 
The book is much better. He did make a shot to such a distance in real life but it went down much differently and wasnt shooting a sniper.

The book is really worth reading.
 
I read the book and watched the movie. I thought that both were really great. I'm not a combat veteran so a lot of details probably went right by me. I did notice some details a little off but, it didn't ruin it for me by any means.

Huge respect and thanks for the folks that are willing and able to do that kind of work and the families that support them.
 
I won't say I enjoyed the movie, but I thought it was good. Its tough to say I enjoyed such a morbid movie.

Regardless, when the credits rolled the theater was *silent* and that was a first.
 
Geico266 said:
Okay that is long enough I can't wait. ;)

The scene where he is holding his baby is fake. It is a freaking doll! :eek: I picked it up immediately it looked so freaking fake. A guy behind me said it out loud. They couldn't afford to pay a mother with a baby to shoot the 45 second scene? :rolleyes:

In the middle if a horendous fire fight he pulls out a sat phone and calls his wife? Seriously? :no: :mad2:

At the end of the movie, in front of his kids he points a revolver at his wife in a game? :yikes:

Last firefight, they are given orders to conserve ammo, yet they put their weapons on full auto and began "spray & pray". :mad2:

Yet, this is being heralded as the greatest movie since " Platoon". Not even in the same ballpark. A total disservice to Afghanistan vets, IMHO.
Click to expand...

I call shanigans. I just saw a commercial for the movie and it had every scene you described. Phone call in a fire fight, holding doll as baby, all of it.

You didn't see that movie, did you? You just watched a commercial and posted here about it, right?
 
Planning to see it, but also planning on wondering how they screwed up a decent book so badly.

Maybe this weekend but we're supposed to have record highs and I want to go outside. I've had a week of being trapped at my desk writing ansible scripts. We're hunting for a DevOps developer though. Heh. I gotta get back to the excitement of playing manager. Heh.

Unfortunately the nice wx also means we'll have mud. So maybe a movie theater is a better idea for a couple of hours. Or flying. Or the indoor range.

Plus it's one of those "vote with your dollar" things. I like nothing better than seeing the pederass Roggan whine about the success of this semi-fiction against his pile of dog poop that stirred an international incident...

But we have free tickets sitting here from something the Mrs won or something. Oh well. Hmm. Guess I just like bolstering the viewership numbers then. Hehe. Whatever. ;)
 
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